Various types of liquid ejecting apparatuses for ejecting liquid from a nozzle are known. A typical one is an ink-jetting recording apparatus.
As shown in JP Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-232808 and JP Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-211003, an ink-jetting printer that is a typical example of ink-jetting recording apparatus ejects an ink drop toward a recording medium such as a recording paper, in order to record an image or characters.
For a printer coping with a large recording paper such as an “A0” size and/or for a printer coping with a large number of printing operations for a commercial use or the like, it is necessary to contain a large amount of ink, because a consumption amount of ink is large. In addition, in a printer capable of printing with many color inks, it is necessary to contain the respective color inks. Thus, an ink supplying source that can contain a large amount of ink, such as an ink tank or an ink cartridge, is arranged at a main unit of the printer. The ink is supplied from the ink supplying source to a recording head through an ink supplying tube.
In the above construction, in order to stabilize supply of the ink to the recording head, the sub tank is mounted on a carriage. Conventionally, each sub tank is mounted for each kind of ink. The ink supplied from the ink supplying source through the ink supplying tube is temporarily stored in an ink storing room of the sub tank, and then is supplied to the recording head. Preferably, a part of the ink storing room is formed by an elastic partition. In the case, the elastic partition can absorb pressure fluctuation of the ink caused by a main scanning operation of the carriage, so that the supply of the ink to the recording head is stabilized.
Herein, it is preferable that components of the ink-jetting recording apparatus are made as small as possible in order to positively advance conpactification of the apparatus and reduction of cost. If independent sub tanks are mounted on the carriage for the respective kinds of ink, the number of kinds of components and the number of the components are large depending on the number of the kinds of ink, which is disadvantageous for the reduction of cost. In addition, the number of assembling steps is also large. Furthermore, if each ink supplying tube is connected to each sub tank, the total ink supplying tubes takes a large space, and connecting operations thereof are much troublesome.